


a rescue shop within a yard of hell

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Guardian Angels, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 04:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: “There are angels,” she tells him once, when he is barely eight and wondering why he is not allowed to sleep before she has repeated her words over again in both English and Urdu. “Watching over you.”The might be angels, he allows himself to agree as he traces the imprint of an iron burned into his arm, but they aren’t watching very closely.(Where Andrew is Neil's guardian angel, for whatever that might be worth)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this post: https://nwesninski.tumblr.com/post/158792931018/concept-andrew-as-neils-very-annoyed-guardian

Neil’s strongest childhood memory is not of violence, or of blood, or of death; instead it is of the quiet whispers of his mother’s bedtime prayer, murmured against his hair every night from the earliest he can remember through that final, rain-soaked last moments on the beach. She says the words three times in three different languages - her own version of the trisagion - and seals them against his skull with a press of her lips. “There are angels,” she tells him once, when he is barely eight and wondering why he is not allowed to sleep before she has repeated her words over again in both English and Urdu. “Watching over you.”

The might be angels, he allows himself to agree as he traces the imprint of an iron burned into his arm, but they aren’t watching very closely.

* * *

The thing is, Neil is _lucky_.

Or rather, he’s very unlucky - He doesn’t keep his mouth shut when he should, doesn’t stay down after the first hit, or even the second. He doesn’t follow the rules that he’s clearly learned, doesn’t play the game he could probably win. He crosses lines and his father’s temper and his mother’s last nerve and then, when they’re on the run and he’s Chris and Stefan and twenty other boys, he crosses borders illegally and crosses paths with the law on three continents. It’s not so much that he’s a magnet for trouble as he is a magnifier for it, and when there’s none to be found he makes his own - but he’s not as unlucky as he could be.

His father’s men catch up to them in Karachi and the bullet misses his heart and his bones, entering and exiting through nothing but muscle and flesh. Lola takes a knife to him outside of Birmingham and the first stab catches on his ribs at just the right angle to deflect the blade away from his organs. Every city they hide in they are found, and every time they get away.

Neil is very unlucky, and just lucky enough to survive it; sometimes, he thinks that maybe there’s something looking out for him after all.

* * *

His mother dies with the same bedtime prayer on her lips, fighting against the pull of death to thank the universe for sending someone to protect her son.

Neil is exhausted, and emotionally numb, but he is otherwise unharmed.

The universe might want him to suffer, but at least it’s keeping him safe.

* * *

Kevin Day comes for him in the Millport locker room, a storm of old memories and careless critiques on his playing style; Kevin comes at him with insults, but he also comes with a contract. It’s everything Neil has ever wanted - and everything he’s been running from. 

There’s a moment, somewhere between the first refusal and the first time Kevin throws his stats at him like a grenade, clenching his teeth around the pin, where he thinks he might be recognized. In a single word Kevin’s voice goes from sharp to soft to sharp again, eyes squinting around the lines of his tattoo; he pauses just long enough to take another step closer, to bully Neil backwards into the light.

Neil takes one step away and an unseen weight catches him below the ribs, knocking him to his knees and back into shadow.

He’s gasping for air, gasping to breathe around what feels like a broken rib, but Hernandez takes Kevin by both shoulders at the assumed attack and shoves him out of the locker room before he can place exactly what memory Neil’s face belongs in.

It’s lucky. Neil’s always been lucky.

* * *

After some time, Kevin learns who he is.

Before that, so does Riko.

* * *

Kathy’s show has every marker of a career making hit - young, attractive, famous faces. Witty dialogue from interesting characters. A reconciliation. A feud.

Every second of it feels like an extra zero in her bank account, and by the time the boys have managed to scrape themselves out of their chairs and into the parking lot, she’s planned her retirement from the media spotlight (and, of course, her triumphant return to it).

Later, the technicians will tell her they don’t know what happened. That the cameras were recording, the footage streaming live.

All that airs is static.

* * *

At the banquet, Neil follows Jean and Riko away from witnesses.

And Matt, after a prodding in his gut that he can’t quite ignore (can’t quite place, either. One second he’s dancing with Dan and the next it’s like there’s a knife digging slow and deep into his stomach, twisting with worry), follows Neil.

* * *

The first piece of mail Neil gets during his time at Palmetto is a letter with Edgar Allen stationary that arrives heavy and conspicuous in an embossed envelope.

Inside is a picture of Kevin with crosshairs drawn over his face, and a plane ticket.

(He’s just as lucky in those two and a half weeks as he is the rest of his life: he bleeds and he screams and he can feel his body pushed to the breaking point, but he survives.)

* * *

_There are angels_ , his mother used to tell him - she says the words like they’re her church, in the languages of her father and her son and her holy communions. _Watching over you_.

There are no angels in Baltimore.

In the darkness of the basement, Neil feels his luck run out. He feels it in the way he can feel the darkness at the corners of his vision, the numbness in the tips of his fingers and running up from his toes. In the way there’s no catch of blade on bone or barely there graze of deflection. In the way the lighter burns and burns and burns and _burns_.

He feels his luck run out in the same way he feels his time run short - in great pain, and with a quiet feeling of defiance as he prepares to meet his mother with an ‘I told you so.’

There are no angels watching over him. But then, with shattered wood and loaded guns, there are FBI agents.

And then, in a hotel that’s as broken down as he feels, there are the Foxes.

* * *

The buzzer sounds a second time, their unexpected victory echoing its own disbelief in the sudden silence of the stadium, and it’s maybe two parts blind luck and five parts Jean’s absence that’s let them eke that final point. All he can process is the way the ringing of the end of game is matching the ringing in his ears, and the sudden displacement of air as the racquet comes toward his head.

Riko’s sneer is something feral, gone mad in his defeat, and his eyes are the steely set of resolve. He swings the racquet with murder in every line of intention, and time slows only enough for Neil to realize that this year has finally come to claim his life as he always knew it would.

Another rush of air, this time at his back, and the swing cuts short with a metallic, bell-like toll as the racquet catches against the upswing of a burnished sword.

The man who stands against Riko is amber and gold, an electrical storm raging behind the blank hollowness of his gaze. He wears a centurion’s armor, or an exy uniform, and the blade in his hand is also the broad net of a goalkeeper’s. Riko screams around the flash of fire and brilliant light that accompanies the entrance, screams as the sword cuts through metal and flesh and bone behind, and screams around a shattered arm when the being drops his stance.

He turns to Neil and he is only a man, amber and gold. “You,” his voice is a crack of lightning, is quiet and unformidable. “Are the biggest pain in the ass of the last eight centuries.”


End file.
